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It’s hard to think of a more harmonious collaboration than one between Batsheva Hay and Laura Ashley. A fan of the chintzy British textiles brand since her childhood, Hay remembers a sweet Laura Ashley dress she wore, much to her delight, at the age of four. The company’s print archive is the place the former lawyer’s mind wanders to in daydreams; it is her version of heaven.
“There’s nothing I’ve been dreaming about more,” says Hay of the 15-piece edit of Victorian-inspired dresses she designed with painfully-cute mini-me versions, layered skirts, blouses, and a cutesy apron and oven mitt set. “To me, Laura Ashley embodies an unpretentious beauty. I like to wear things that are comfortable and functional and have pockets and come in cotton, but at the same time I want a transportive experience; I want to become a different version of myself that’s elevated, fun and adventurous. I am not a minimalist.”
Hay’s world is not all frills. The darker side to the joyfully democratic Laura Ashley aesthetic that influenced the cultural psyche in the ’80s chimes with her self-professed weirdness. She recalls running into one of Laura Ashley’s original employees in an art gallery, and hearing a first-hand account of the businesswoman who was not the “straightforward country woman” people assumed her to be. “She was interested in punk,” enthuses Hay. “She liked to shoot her dresses with beaten-up old boots and things like that.”
In the spirit of Ashley herself, Hay went in to “shake things up” at the company now owned by US investment firm Gordon Brothers. The campaign features the fiery-haired Batsheva heroine running along train tracks in a prairie-style green floral dress; petting pigs and rabbits in mixed-print Shakespearean numbers, and dredging herself out of a pond looking suitably romantic wearing a rose-dappled smock with a fabulous jolt of neon. The latter concept earned Hay more than a few calls from Laura Ashley HQ gently querying the direction of the collab. Did Hay care? Absolutely not. “I wanted to recreate the feeling of a woman on the loose,” she muses. “What is she doing looking as if she is being baptized in Central Park and climbing over a fence in Brooklyn?” Answers on a postcard.
While Covid-19 restrictions meant Hay couldn’t actually travel to the illustrious Welsh archive, which has since moved to Manchester, the designer trawled eBay, flea markets and old photographs – as she always does – for references. She is particularly pleased with how the “naive femininity” at the heart of the womenswear comes across, but plans to expand the Batsheva X Laura Ashley world to include more pastoral homeware. Think: tissue boxes, tea cozies or more wonderfully ruffly regalia. Finding a coolness in this nostalgia is Hay’s sweetly disarming USP.
Batsheva X Laura Ashley retails from $50 to $313 at Net-a-Porter, MatchesFashion, Nordstrom, and Batsheva.com, with select pieces offered at LauraAshleyUSA.com, among other retailers.
